Mercy killing trial that stoked debate over euthanasia in UK
Call for law change after wife who took pills with dying husband was charged
FRAIL pensioner Mavis Eccleston clutched her daughter’s hand and calmly revealed the suicide pact she had entered into with her dying husband, whispering: “I love you with all of my heart, but I want to be with your dad.”
For Joy Munns months have not diluted the anguish of that moment. “I begged mum not to go through with it,” she said. “I took my daughter round and said, ‘Don’t you want to see Ruth get married?’
“We knew what they wanted to do. Did we know when it was going to happen? No. Every day I woke up with the dreadful thought that today would be the day.”
Mrs Munns is openly proud of the decision her mother made, a decision that became a mercy killing in the early hours of February 18, 2018. Both husband and wife swallowed sleeping tablets at their bungalow in the former mining village of Huntington, South Staffordshire.
Mavis, now 81, survived. Husband Dennis, in the last painful and degrading throes of bowel cancer, did not. By the end, the former colliery worker was in agony.
He kissed his wife’s hand and whispered “Thank you” when she agreed to help end his life.
Mavis’ subsequent murder trial, and the jury’s decision to clear her, made headlines and stoked the assisted suicide debate.
Those who support assisted euthanasia point out that its current illegality forces individuals to travel alone to Dignitas clinics abroad. They die without loved ones around them.
Mrs Munns, a Burton businesswoman, has now become an unlikely ambassador for Dignity in Dying, an organisation dedicated to ending the criminalisation of those who help loved ones end their suffering.
She is a regional head of lingerie company Ann Summers and runs a confectionary shop. But last week, the 55-year-old spoke at a ‘choice at the end of life’ parliamentary meeting co-chaired by Sutton Coldfield MP Andrew Mitchell.
While other countries have opened the door for individuals to make their own decision to end their suffering, the UK government’s attitude remains entrenched.
It is a thorny issue that’s seeped in religion, ethics and politics. Does an individual have the legal right to decide when enough is enough? Does an individual have the legal right to ask those closest to them to help end their suffering?
In parliament, Mrs Munns spoke from experience. She vividly recalled the day her mother decided that death shared with her husband of 60 years was the answer.
“All of us just hoped dad would pass away in his sleep,” said Mrs Munns. “Mum woke up that dreadful morning to what she described as a wounded animal howling.”
Mavis dragged her husband back into bed despite herself having undergone a triple heart bypass.
Mrs Munns said: “She carried him back to bed where he said, ‘Don’t ring the hospital, I want to go’.’’
She added: “She was 19, he was 22 when they got married. They never went anywhere without each other. She didn’t want him to die on his own.
“She said, ‘If your dad could have gone peacefully, without pain, I would not have done what I did’. “They were good, honest, hardworking, working class people. We are a very close family.”
The tragic pact was discovered by a nephew, who rang the family. “He said, ‘You need to go to Stafford Hospital,” Mrs Munns recalls. “I stood there, frozen. I thought my God, it’s happened.”
Then the legal nightmare began. Legislation deals with hard facts, not devotion – Mavis was arrested and charged with murder.
She confessed to the police and believed that was enough. It was not. The ‘killer’ label would hang over the pensioner for 14 months.
Mrs Munns said: “We kept so much from mum. She didn’t know she was going to be charged. She came away from that first meeting with police thinking that was it. She’d had a triple bypass that didn’t work and I didn’t want her to have all that stress. She hadn’t got a clue.
“Even when she went to court, she thought it was simply a case of telling them the truth. She didn’t know there could be a prison sentence.
“When they gave the ‘not guilty’ verdict, we thought life would go back to normal, but we had a new normal.
“With mum, you could tell it had really taken its toll. Because of the case, we, as a family, could not grieve for dad.”
Mrs Munns adds: “If the law was different, none of this would have happened.”
She doesn’t blame the police. She blames the unyielding system.
“The police had a job to do. When they took Mum, I begged them not to. But they were so lovely and they treated her with the utmost respect.”
The Stafford Crown Court trial and publicity that surrounded it nearly broke the family.
“It was really tough,” Mrs Munns said. “Mum’s OK now, but the court case was gruelling for her. She did amazing and stayed strong. I was OK, then completely broke down.
“My doctor said, ‘You were in fight mode for so long, now you’re in flight mode’.”
Detractors fear legal change would open the door to the vulnerable and depressed unnecessarily making the ultimate decision while in a dark mental fog.
Dignity in Dying chief executive Sarah Wootton says: “The Ecclestons’ experience is sadly not an isolated tragedy. Families are being failed by the UK’s outdated laws on assisted dying, with dying people forced to resort to drastic actions to avoid unbearable suffering and loved ones criminalised for acts of compassion.
“Meanwhile, 150 million people worldwide have access to safe, compassionate assisted dying legislation. As we begin to emerge from the worst of a pandemic that has forced us all to confront our own mortality, the time is now for a grown-up conversation about the fact we are getting dying wrong in this country, and how we can, at last, fix our broken laws.
“Our new book, Last Rights: The Case For Assisted Dying, in which the Ecclestons’ story features, begins that conversation, and the next step must be a parliamentary inquiry into the UK’s blanket ban on assisted dying.
“If MPs truly care about our dying citizens, they will agree that the time has come to take a full and frank look at whether the status quo is really working.
“The Ecclestons’ story shows quite clearly that it is not.”
If the law was different, none of this would have happened Joy Munns, below
AN autograph book signed by The Beatles before they found fame has sold for £4,000 at a Midland auction. Pamela Timson, now a grandmother, was only 12 when she waited for hours to get the Fab Four’s autographs.
She was among a crowd of only 100 who watched the band perform at Mansfield’s Granada Theatre on March 26, 1963.
For Pamela, the long wait has reaped rewards. Her autograph book sold for £4,420 to an anonymous international buyer at auctioneers Hansons on Tuesday.
Fifty-seven years ago, Pamela’s little red book was among a handful grabbed by one of The Beatles – she can’t recall which one – signed by all four and returned. Her book also contains autographs by Adam Faith, Roy Orbison, The Walker Brothers and many more.
The 69-year-old retired building society customer adviser recalls: “I was standing outside the stage door at the Granada with friends, hoping against hope that someone would pop outside for a cigarette break.
“It happened that night when one of The Beatles appeared. Sadly, I hadn’t worked out who was who at that time, and it all happened so quickly. They’d only just released Please Please Me and were yet to have a No.1 hit.
“Thank you, whichever Beatle you were, for taking my book and getting it signed by the Fab Four!
“Only later as their success grew did I realise I was the owner of something very special.”
Pamela, from Worksop, added:
“I’m now approaching my 70th birthday and, as I look at my autograph book, I realise how lucky I was to be a teenager at that time.
“In 1962, at the age of 12, I discovered the Granada Theatre. I could see my favourites in person for the princely sum of Little Richard in October 1962. I had six shillings and sixpence in tickets for the early evening show, old money. thankfully, because when he came “It was tough on the on stage for the later performance road in those early days fans stormed the stage and he never for both up-and-coming got to perform his set.” and established artists. Pamela’s most poignant autograph They played small is that of Roy Orbison, signed just venues in front of a few weeks before his wife Claudette, who hundred fans. she also met, died in a motorbike “I was lucky. I got to crash. see many of my favourites “The autographs have been in my and some of their autographs safe for years. I always wondered are in my book how much they’d make at auction. including Del Shannon, “As I approach 70, I feel It’s time Brian for someone else to enjoy them. I Hyland and hope whoever buys my book of nostalgia Dion and memories will treasure DiMucci. and appreciate it as I have done for
“I saw the past 60 years.”